forty-seven #2
The thing about being in love with Mira was that Sulim so easily believed her when she said they had lived other lives—that they were currently living any number of lives out there in the universe.
Whether they found each other or not didn’t matter.
Sulim understood how soulmates worked now.
As long as you have one out there, your soul is always searching for them.
Sulim wondered what the “her” of the other world had thought about being paired with someone like Mira, who was the daughter of greatness and a powerful sorceress who would live thousands of years.
Was she intimidated? Had she been confused?
Or had she accepted it as easily as this Sulim had?
Because why wouldn’t I have someone like her for a soulmate?
For someone who understood me on a level only she could?
By then, Sulim had accepted that her life was one of greatness.
Not necessarily moralistic greatness, but to be a successful mercenary, she must be someone.
It wasn’t easy to become so successful, so respected by the others, while refusing to kill people.
Oh, Sulim had been responsible for deaths, but she had never directly killed someone.
She had never murdered. She had watched the lights leave someone’s eyes as they instantly bled out or ceased to function.
She had seen the toll it took on men like Sonall, who gave himself over to a life of violence, especially if it meant protecting her.
I wonder if he imagines he’s protecting his sister, instead. Because he couldn’t back then.
But that was the only time she thought of him that night.
Making love to Mira was a different experience from anyone else she had ever been with—Sulim knew that if anything happened to tear them apart, she would never find a love like this again.
The kind that became a part of her sinew and joined the blood that made her heart pump that same love to the rest of her mortal body.
Let this moment cease belonging to our bodies.
Sulim would remember, later, the warmth of Mira's skin and the rhythm of shared breath, but those things were only communication.
The truth of what passed between them had never depended upon flesh.
Flesh was simply the language the universe had given mortals to describe something tangible.
The very thing the High Priestess had loved so much, she was willing to sacrifice everything to experience.
Oftentimes, in books, poetry, music, and cinema, a theme arose that love reached its highest form in the joining of two bodies. They were wrong. Bodies failed. They aged.
They died.
Souls, however... Souls recognized one another even when memory did not.
They met in the Void. They teased each other, dreaming of the day when they would finally meet in that language called flesh.
When will we haunt the mortal world? When will we revel in Her creation?
Sulim didn’t need to hear sermons or have contact with the High Priestess to know that her life as she knew it was because of the unknown creator.
Somehow, millions and billions of years ago, an entity had created all of this—the air she breathed, the laws of the universe, and the earth that brought them together.
She didn’t need a julah’s mind to envision the day the unknown creator manifested herself a mortal body to speak the language of flesh.
Wasn’t it natural? Why wouldn’t it happen?
Who creates a playground and doesn’t want to get in on that?
Even God rode the rides when the park opened.
As she kissed her soulmate; as she brought her to bed; as they undressed; as they remembered what it was like to be united across time and space, through every reality…
She was there, with the mortal avatar that scoured the first flower-filled planet and decreed that love should manifest.
Love was what was missing from her perfect world.
She would create a specimen for Her to love, and when She had to return to the origin of creation, She created a soulmate for Her beloved so they would never be alone.
Maybe Sulim was someone like that. Maybe her soul was plucked from the Void to become Mira’s beloved, but it wasn’t out of nowhere.
I was selected. Someone strong enough to withstand the foibles of being a human entwined with a julah.
Someone who could strike down this haughty woman’s confidence with one look.
In a moment of clarity, Mira rested her forehead against Sulim’s. Our minds so close… Sulim closed her eyes, and for an instant, she was the impossible equation of the universe. Not immortal. Certainly not divine. Impossible.
She stood beneath unfamiliar constellations.
She laughed beside a river that had never flowed on Cerilyn, on Qahrain, not even Yahzen.
She wore another face. Another name. Hands marked by calluses earned from work she had never performed.
Degrees earned by a mind that learned academics Sulim never heard of.
Across from her stood Mira. Older. Younger. Human. Not human. A queen. A beggar. A scholar. A woman clothed in white. A woman clothed in armor. Thousands. Millions…
Every version distinct. Every version her and nothing more.
None of those women said a word. Recognition arrived before sounds ever could.
“Found you.”
The vision vanished as quietly as it had come, leaving Sulim with tears she welcomed to express the depths of her desire.